Magnetic heads of the core-type have been widely used for reading out the state of magnetization stored in a magnetic recording medium, such as a magnetic tape, a magnetic card or the like. Theoretically, this head is operated such that variations in the flux density, caused by electromagnetic induction when the medium moves, are read out in the form of the electric voltage. This magnetic head exhibits a very excellent characteristic in reading out analog signals. However, electromagnetic induction is utilized, and this has such a defect that when the tape speed is low, the output of the head is small, making it impossible to obtain high resolution power.
Further, as another detecting element, there has been proposed a so-called Hall element of semiconductor thin film. Since the Hall element produces a voltage in proportion to the intensity of magnetic field emanating from the recording medium, this is suitable for various applications and may be also employed as a read head. In this case, since the output of the Hall element is a voltage proportional to the magnetic field emanating from the recording medium, the Hall voltage varies with the kind of recording medium used and, in principle, the head has no memory function.